The third act is the climax of the work, and stands almost unrivalled in the field of dramatic music, for the manner in which horror and passion are illustrated.  After a dark and despairing aria by Valentin ("Eccomi sola ormai"), and a brief duet with Raoul, the conspirators enter.  The great trio, closing with the conjuration, “Quel Dio,” the awful and stately chant of the monks in the blessing of the unsheathed daggers ("Sia gloria eterna e onore"), and the thrilling unisons of the chorus ("D’un sacro zel l’ardore"), which fairly glow with energy, fierceness, and religious fury,—­these numbers of themselves might have made an act; but Meyerbeer does not pause here.  He closes with a duet between Raoul and Valentin which does not suffer in comparison with the tremendous combinations which have preceded it.  It is filled with the alternations of despair and love, of grief and ecstasy.  In its movement it is the very whirlwind of passion.  Higher form dramatic music can hardly reach.  In the Italian version the performance usually closes at this point; but there is still another striking and powerful scene, that in which Raoul and Valentin are united by the dying Marcel.  Then the three join in a sublime trio, and for the last time chant together the old Lutheran psalm, and await their fate amid the triumphant harpings that sound from the orchestra and the hosanna they sing to its accompaniment.

THE STAR OF THE NORTH.

“L’Etoile du Nord,” an opera in three acts, words by Scribe, was first performed at the Opera Comique, Paris, Feb. 16, 1854, and in Italian as “La Stella del Nord” at Covent Garden, London, July 19, 1855.  In English it has been produced under the title of “The Star of the North.”  The opera contains several numbers from the composer’s earlier work, “Feldlager in Schlesien,” which was written for the opening of the Berlin opera-house, in memory of Frederick the Great, and was subsequently (Feb. 17, 1847) performed with great success in Vienna, Jenny Lind taking the role of Vielka.  The “Feldlager,” however, has never been given out of Germany.

The action of the opera transpires in Wyborg, on the Gulf of Finland, in the first act, at a camp of the Russians in the second, and at the palace of the Czar Peter in the third.  In the first, Peter, who is working at Wyborg, disguised as a carpenter, makes the acquaintance of Danilowitz, a pastry-cook, and Catharine, a cantiniere, whose brother George is about to marry Prascovia.  Catharine brings about this marriage; and not only that, but saves the little village from an invasion by a strolling horde of Tartars, upon whose superstition she practises successfully, and so conducts herself in general that Peter falls in love with her, and they are betrothed, though she is not aware of the real person who is her suitor.  Meanwhile the conscription takes place, and to save her newly wedded brother she volunteers for fifteen